Col Theodore Roosevelt came to Boston yesterday and spoke for exactly an hour in the late afternoon to about 4,000 people who assembled in the Boston Arena to hear him. The original plan was that he should make his address at Fenway Park, where an outing, including athletic sports, etc, was to be held under the auspices of the Progressive City Committee.

Some track events were run off and a baseball game was going on when the rain came down and drove the people who wanted to hear Col Roosevelt to the Arena, which had been engaged for such an emergency.

The size of the crowd was doubtless disappointing to the Progressive leaders, but it was as large as could reasonably be expected on a Monday in the middle of Summer and on a day when the weather conditions were those described in the old saying that “open and ‘shot’ is a sign of wet.”

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It is safe to say, however, that the audience was the smallest Col Roosevelt has spoken to in Boston since he became President of the United States.

Just before 5 o’clock the clouds, which had been threatening all the afternoon, began to drop rain and the outdoor exercises had to be called off. Announcement was then made that the colonel would speak in the Arena and there was great scurrying for trolley cars, “taxies” and other means of conveyance from the baseball grounds to the Arena.